Hussein Abdusamadov

Hussein Abdusamadov (1985-) was the ringleader of a grassroots Islamic State cell in Tajikistan and the mastermind of the 2018 Danghara attack.

Biography
Hussein Nakhudov in Selga, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union in 1985. His surname, which meant "pea", was an embarrassment to him, so he changed it to "Abdusamadov". His father died when he was three, and his mother raised him and his two brothers in the capital of Dushanbe after the Dissolution of the Soviet Union. The attended the elite Presidential Lyceum from the age of ten, and he went on to serve as president of the student council at the Tajik State University of Commerce before dropping out in the 2004. He was radicalized by fundamentalist imam Nosirhoja Ubaidov, who was a recruited and agent for radical Islamists, leading to his dropping out from college. He told his mother that he would take a gap year to work in Russia, but he later travelled to Dubai and then to Kazakhstan. He became the leader of a grassroots Islamic State cell in Tajikistan, radicalizing several youths, including his relatives Zafarjon Safarov and Asomiddin Madzhidov. The cell carried out the 2018 Danghara attack, in which they launched a car-ramming and stabbing attack on Western tourist cyclists, killing four of them. On 30 July, Abdusamadov was captured and his four other cell members killed in a police raid, and Abdusamadov was tortured into claiming that his allegiance was to the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, an opposition party outlawed by the government.